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Important information about NSF’s implementation of the revised 2 CFR

NSF Financial Assistance awards (grants and cooperative agreements) made on or after October 1, 2024, will be subject to the applicable set of award conditions, dated October 1, 2024, available on the NSF website. These terms and conditions are consistent with the revised guidance specified in the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance published in the Federal Register on April 22, 2024.

Important information for proposers

All proposals must be submitted in accordance with the requirements specified in this funding opportunity and in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted. It is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets these requirements. Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Dear Colleague Letter

Critical-Zone Collaborative Network Retirement

Announces the sunsetting of the Critical-Zone Collaborative Network starting with the Fiscal Year 2025. The Division of Earth Sciences will still welcome multidisciplinary research proposals through the division’s other existing programs.
Announces the sunsetting of the Critical-Zone Collaborative Network starting with the Fiscal Year 2025. The Division of Earth Sciences will still welcome multidisciplinary research proposals through the division’s other existing programs.

Dear Colleagues:

The CZNet (Critical-Zone Collaborative Network) program in the Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) was the successor to the Critical Zone Observatories (CZO) that began in 2007 in response to recommendations in the National Academy’s report “Basic Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences” (2001). These programs have supported research that increased understanding of processes regulating conditions at, and near, the Earth’s surface. These programs also deepened understanding of the structure, development, and function of the critical zone, defined as the constantly evolving boundary layer where rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms interact. CZO and CZNet research projects have brought together interdisciplinary teams of hydrologists, geomorphologists, geochemists, ecologists, geophysicists, and climate scientists to investigate the Earth’s near-surface environment. Moreover, the CZNet program has diversified the cadre of people engaged in Earth-Science research supporting several hundred undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and early-career professors who consider themselves to be Critical-Zone scientists.

The Critical-Zone research community has grown in the last seventeen years, and interdisciplinary projects are currently being supported by various core programs within EAR. Accordingly, research on the critical zone has outgrown the need for a special call for proposals; there are now numerous homes for this type of interdisciplinary research across EAR, the Geosciences Directorate (GEO), and other parts of NSF.

Thus, EAR announces that starting with Fiscal Year 2025 the CZNet program will be archived and no longer accept proposals. EAR will continue to welcome proposals that take an innovative multidisciplinary approach to studying Earth’s critical zone in the Division’s other programs that cover these topic areas. GEO believes that this change will further expand the diversity of topics and investigators involved in critical-zone science, and firmly embed the critical zone as an important construct for studying Earth-surface processes.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Isern
Assistant Director, GEO

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